Ignoring newlines with regex in xml

Question

This is for a project for a very specific use.

I am trying to find how to find any empty text from the xml and replace it with a message.

regex = re.compile(r'>\s*</')


replaced = re.sub(regex, ">[!] JSON value does not exist, Check your Json!</", temp)

For example filename is blank

        <file>               
            <fileType>Mezza</fileType>
            <fileName></fileName>
            <segments>0000</segments>
        </file>

and the output would be:

         <file>               
            <fileType>Mezza</fileType>
            <fileName>[!] value does not exist!</fileName>
            <segments>0000</segments>
        </file>

However I am getting for other parts where there is white space and newline I dont want to have this message, both tag names are different there is a new line and they are closing tags how do I implement this in regex?:

</fileName>[!] value does not exist!</file>

I thought you're trying to detect if there's only spaces within the tags. — Barmar, May 31 '19 at 17:54

Emma · Answer 1 · 2019-05-31T18:03:53.280

Maybe, another option here we might be having would be to just find filename, and replace what we desire inside the tag, with likely an expression such as:

(<fileName>)(.+)?(<\/fileName>)

if I understand the problem correctly.

Demo 1

If we have fully empty tags, this expression might likely work:

(>)()(<\/)

Demo 2

If we will be having empty tags and tags with horizontal spaces, then we would be expanding it to:

(>)(|[^\S\r\n]+)(<\/)

Demo 3

Test

# coding=utf8
# the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility

import re

regex = r"(<fileName>)(.+)?(<\/fileName>)"

test_str = ("        <file>               \n"
    "            <fileType>Mezza</fileType>\n"
    "            <fileName></fileName>\n"
    "            <segments>0000</segments>\n"
    "        </file>")

subst = "\\1[!] value does not exist!\\3"

# You can manually specify the number of replacements by changing the 4th argument
result = re.sub(regex, subst, test_str, 0, re.MULTILINE)

if result:
    print (result)

# Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

Thanks Emma for the reply, but filename is one example. There are other tags, that is the issue. — Jim, May 31 '19 at 17:47

Barmar · Answer 2 · 2019-05-31T19:09:50.537

0

Use [ \t]* instead of \s*. This will match spaces and tabs, but not newlines. So the code should be:

regex = re.compile(r'>[ \t]*</')

DEMO

edited May 31 '19 at 19:09

answered May 31 '19 at 17:55

Barmar

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Does python accept the `\h` horizontal whitespace? – Onyambu May 31 '19 at 18:05
Check the demo, it's printing the message. – Barmar May 31 '19 at 19:10
1

It would probably be better to parse the XML and check the value there, instead of doing it with a regexp. – Barmar May 31 '19 at 19:10

Ignoring newlines with regex in xml

2 Answers2

Demo 1

Demo 2

Demo 3

Test